The 35 Most Important Things To Do After Installing WordPress

Most new bloggers have no clue what things to do after installing WordPress. If you’ve installed WordPress and are ready to start focusing on writing great content. Before you hit publish, let’s NOT to forget the 35 most important things you should do after installing WordPress and before you start a blog.

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These simple things will ensure that you get your WordPress blog started on the right foot. Follow along and let’s get your WordPress ready so you can start blogging.

If you need help understanding WordPress, I’ve compiled a great list of WordPress tutorials on this blog that will make it easy for you to understand WordPress better. If you’re ready to rock your WordPress blog, then be sure to visit my WordPress tutorials for beginnersDon’t forget to pin it for later!

35 Things to Do After Installing WordPress

1. Modify Your Permalinks

By default WordPress has ugly permalinks that are not SEO friendly. I always use the “post name” structure.

This means that at the end of your URL you will see the name of the post name.

This not only makes your URL prettier than the default structure WordPress setups up which looks like:

domain/?p=111

This is how mine looks. It not only makes your URL prettier, but it is better for search engine optimization.

2. Change Site Title and Tag Line

On the general settings of your main WordPress dashboard, you can find the Site Title and the tag line at the very top.

Add an SEO friendly site title that lets people know what you’re WordPress blog is about. This is also what people will see when they find your site in the organic search engines.

Directly below the site title, you will see the tagline. Change it from “Just another WordPress site” to something more catchy. Consider the tag line kind of like an elevator pitch.

You’re telling people what your business is about in one sentence.

My tagline: Learn WordPress While Starting Your Own Blog.

This lets people know that I am sharing basic WordPress tips that will help a beginner start, grow and monetize their own blog. When creating your site title tagline, make sure that you’re letting people know what your blog is about.

Don’t stress over it too much because you can always go back and change it after installing WordPress.

Both themes I recommend are mobile responsive, so you won’t have to worry about getting penalized by Google for not having a mobile friendly website.

6. Delete Unused Plugins and Themes

Once you’ve decided which theme you want to use, delete the ones you’re not using. Don’t leave any themes or plugins on your site if you’re not using it. I’ve written a complete guide to using WordPress plugins, in case you missed it.

Inactive themes on your blog makes you vulnerable for hackers. If you’re NOT using it remove it.

7. Install Your Essential Plugins

When you’re first starting your WordPress blog, you’ll realize there are several types of plugins that you can use.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the confusion of which plugins you should be using to start your blog. There are tons of plugins that you can get started with.

The most important thing to remember is to only use the plugins you need.

I recommend starting with a few then adding more if you need them as your blog starts to grow.

8. Install A Cache Plugin

If you’re using shared hosting a cache plugin will make your website load a little faster. Having a website that takes forever to load is NOT good.

If you are looking for a free option, I recommend the updraft Plus plugin. I currently use it for a few of my clients sites and it does a great job.

14. Harden Your Security

If you’re using WordPress you need to take WordPress security seriously. Most of my clients never think they will get hacked. Guess what, one of them recently got hacked.

While there is absolutely nothing we can do to prevent hackers 100%. We can take some steps to ensure that our site is setup properly.

Whenever I start a blog, I take precautionary steps to ensure it is setup securely. Don’t wait until it’s too late to think about security.

I have used the BulletProof Security plugin as well as the free version of the WordFence. Many people will swear by the iThemes Security Plugin.

It’s your blog, so make sure you do your due diligence and decide which one you want to use.

15. Change The Admin Username

When you set up your WordPress blog, you may have used the username “admin” because it’s easy to remember.

This is one of the worst things you can do if you want to install a secure WordPress blog. If you did use “admin” as your username. Stop reading this and change it. I’ve written a post that will walk you through step by step on changing your admin username.

Oh and when you’re setting up WordPress make sure that you use a valid email address. They will send you an email that has your username on it, so you don’t forget it.

16. Modify Your Footer

Depending on the theme you choose to use, you can modify your footer.

As you can see from mine, I’ve added a copyright date as well as links to my affiliate disclaimer and privacy page.

You can also add footer widgets to your blog. Dress your blog up the way you want, you can always make changes as you grow your blog.

17. Install Google Analytics

This won’t matter much at the beginning. When you first start blogging it seems like no one is reading your blog posts.

However, as you start promoting your blog and driving traffic to it, you will want to know vital information and statistics about your blog. I’ve written a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to get analytics installed on Genesis. Here’s the ultimate guide to Google Analytics where I show you which reports I pay attention to.

29. Create A Privacy Page

There are several plugins you can use to create a terms of service and privacy page. I’ve used this free plugin from the WordPress repository in the past. After you create the pages, delete the plugin as you won’t need it anymore.

Don’t forget to write a blog disclaimer for your blog, so you can be protected legally.

30. Install Login Limit Plugin

Another great thing you can do for your WordPress blog is to install the Limit Login Plugin. This plugin will block hackers from continually attempting to login to your site.

It will lock out anyone who is unsuccessful of logging into your account after a certain number of times.

31. Create A Child Theme

Before you start making any real changes to your WordPress blog, be sure you create a child theme. A child theme will protect your WordPress blog from losing any of the CSS styles you add to it.

If you’re using a Genesis theme, you won’t have to worry about creating a child theme. You can easily update the software and you won’t ever lose your personal styles or PHP functions.

35. Publish Your First Post

#36 Delete Sample Content

I almost forget to tell you that before you publish your own content, you need to make sure that you delete the sample content. I’ve seen new blogs online that still have the Hello World on their blog post.

Don’t forget about deleting the Sample page as well. Once you’ve deleted the sample content and done all these steps, you can finally start publishing your first blog post.

Final Take Away

I’ve created this as a simple checklist that you can refer to if you are new to WordPress. These steps are important to follow and implement after installing WordPress.

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SEMRush: This tool is amazing and has helped me increase my organic traffic. It is expensive, so don’t pay for it every month. When I’m NOT using it, I’m using KWFinder to help me with my keyword research.

About Susan Velez

Hi! I'm Susan welcome to my blog. Are you ready to use the Internet and a computer to change your finances? I share tips to help you make money online through blogging, side hustles and other non-traditional methods learn moreTwitter, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube

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HI Susan, What a thorough list. My blog was set up for me by some tech helpers I hired about two years ago. I hope we did all these things. You deal with the tech side of blogging. I deal with the content side of blogging. Janice

Hey Susan, thanks for sharing these great ideas! I was happy to see I’ve done some of them already and used some of the same plugins. I was also very happy to there was much more to do. The toughest issues for me setting up my WordPress was choosing a theme. I didn’t want to pay for a theme I didn’t like and was scared I might have to pay for several before settling. I appreciate your theme suggestions on that one!

I know a lot of people use Yoast, I read All-In-One-SEO had an advantage. What are your thoughts?

I use Shareaholic for my sharing plugin because it has other attributes, like a related posts and monetization… Any thoughts on this plugin good / bad?

Thanks for stopping by and glad to see that we’re doing pretty much the same thing. I agree, choosing a WordPress theme can be confusing, the best part is you can always change it later on.

I use Yoast and haven’t used All-In-One-SEO. So I can’t really say whether or not it’s a good one. As long as it helps you with your SEO, I would say go for it.

Same with Shareaholic, never used it so don’t have any opinions about it. I use the Social Warfare Plugin. If you’re happy with your social sharing plugin and it makes it easy for people to share your content, that’s all you’re really looking for.

Sounds like you’re definitely on the right track. Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.

Hi Susan, What a joy to be here today. Oh My goodness!!! You shared a lot of things a new blogger, no, any blogger (New or Pro) should make note. I am amazed to note some of the new things I never knew, though I am in the field almost 2 years now. This is indeed a comprehensive tuto which covers almost everything one need to know while starting a blog of our own. I am bookmarking it for my further reference and application. Thanks a lot for sharing such a lot of info with the connected informative links. I will surely make mention of this post in one of my related posts which I recently y published. Hey, I have a small question, you mentioned in tip #7: “I recommend starting with a few then adding more if you need them as your blog starts to grow.” I have heard that if embed more plugins, it will reduce the loading speed, then what is the maximum plugins one can embed in a website? Thanks. Best Regard ~ Philip

It’s pretty nice to have stumbled on your blog this afternoon, thanks to my visit to Ryan’s great blog; saw your comment and I decided to follow the link to your blog. Nice website you’ve got here I must confess ma’am Susan! 🙂

I believe if a blogger, especially a newbie blogger, would follow these steps you’ve highlighted here, he’s sure to achieve suspicious success with his/her blog.

Most times, new bloggers installs a blog and begin updating with posts without spending the time to the actual configuration of the site and in my knowledge, these configurations will help your blog stand out amongst the plethora blogs out there today.

The very first things I do for every new weblogs I create has always been to delete the dummy post and comment; change the permalink to something really simple “post-name”; install some really cool and all-important plugins; work on the SEO and a few other things that you have done well to mention here, Susan.

You see, I must really commend your efforts in putting this post up ma’am. Do have a blessed there yonder! 🙂

Hello Susan, Very Informative article about wordpress blog at one place, thanx a lot for sharing such articles for helping bigginers, please suggest some traffic increasing tips to rank website in google and other search engines.

I am so glad that you enjoyed reading my blog post. As for increasing traffic, I am not a traffic expert. I can only share what I am doing to grow my blog, which is what I am doing here. I journal my personal experience of what I am doing to grow my blog.

If you need specific traffic tips, I would suggest finding someone who specializes in blog traffic.

I am so glad that you are finding the posts helpful. As for backlinks, I don’t focus on them. My main concern is writing content that helps my readers. I’ve focused on backlinks and trying to rank on Google in the past and it led to nothing but trouble.

So with this blog, I am not going to be focusing on backlinks. As for Adsense, you can see that I haven’t started using it on this blog and still not sure if I will.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I can only write about what I know. Have a great day 🙂

Wow! This does sound like a lot of work. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I quit my blog after just a month of having started it. I find YouTube vlogging to be easier than blogging. WordPress’ learning curve is pretty steep and you have to meticulously do a lot of stuff in order to have a successful blog.

Hey Susan, This is purely amazing and thank you very much for sharing this. I just wanna say one thing. I basically do not know anything about WordPress or SEO. However, I have read articles on setting up a blog and SEO such as this one. So, I have installed Yoast SEO plugin and I could come to the Google’s second page with one of my optimized keywords. I did nothing except following the guidelines from the Yoast.

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